I NEVER WATCHED MUCH TV.
Some Sesame Street, of course. The occasional Playhouse Disney show like Allegra's Window, Bear in the Big Blue House, and so on, mostly when I was in preschool. Some Clifford in the morning and Arthur after school a bit later on. Movies weren't too frequent, either. Mostly I watched Disney tapes.
I found ways to pass the time, preferring worlds of my own creation. Here are a few of the time-wasters I've come up with over the earlier years of my life and how to play them. They come in a few categories.
SITUATIONAL GAMES I PLAYED (SOMETIMES WITH FRIENDS OR FAMILY) AND HOW TO PLAY THEM
THE DUCKING GAME
All we needed was a car and willing participants. These were usually grandparents.
All we did was duck whenever we passed under a traffic light. Otherwise, we might bump our heads! (This is where it helps to have the participants be willing to play along and say something like, "Oh, I thought I felt my head bonk against something a little!") Most important, though, was to say "duck duck duck duck duck!" until the traffic light threat passed.
Sometimes they pretended to be confused. Grandpa in particular often said, "goose goose goose!"
One time I tried to correct him. "When we go under the light, you have to say 'duck,' Grandpa," I said. We came to the next traffic light. "Duck, Grandpa! Duck, Grandpa!" And so on.
Kelly was sometimes bored with the duck part and suggested everyone get a free pass where everyone said an animal noise of their choice. I disagreed, but grandparents being grandparents, they gave her a turn. Depending on the length of the drive, we might have had 3 free passes.
The Ducking Game eventually became forgotten (we would later spend drives taking turns adding a sentence to a story about the four of us, while wondering what crazy sentence Grandpa would come up with next). But for a time in my life, it was a great highlight, one that was nearly forgotten until I sat down to write.
FURBY LOVERS' BASKETBALL
Anybody can enjoy this game because unlike what the name says, it has nothing to do with those creepy Furbies. Christine and I needed a name for our new indoor recess game, and this one sufficed because, well, we both used to love Furbies in first grade. It wasn't wrong.
All we did was take turns shooting three shots at a basketball hoop. Points were awarded accordingly and the winner was whoever had the most points at the end of recess.
If the ball goes straight in= one point
If the ball hits the painted square on the backboard around the hoop before going in= 2 points
If the ball circles the rim before going in= 3 points.
COIN TOSS
On Fridays, our school offered after-school clubs. From robotics to stamping to art, I tried many things over the years. At dismissal, we would wait in the gym until our respective activity leaders came down to get their group.
Christine and I both partook in fifth grade, and we needed a time-waster until it was time to head off to our respective activity. Here is what we did:
We loved the Microsoft Office Assistant characters, which you'll hear about later. Short version: these were animated characters in programs like Word that popped up to help you after you pressed F1. So we made a game with them: on a sheet of looseleaf paper, we wrote the names of characters all over surrounded by a circle, like Clippit or Rocky or Merlin. We colored in the circles.
Then we'd ask a question and blindly toss a coin onto the paper to see where it landed. Each character stood for a different yes-or-no answer. Clippit was "the answer you don't want it to be." Rocky was "yes, definitely." Merlin might be "try asking again." We'd continue asking questions and flipping the coin in this manner for a good fifteen-twenty minutes. It's hard to believe we kept ourselves amused for this long, but we had a good time with it.
DOG CLASS
What do you do when you want to be a teacher but are 1) too young and 2) don't have a class of people to play with? You invent one. I had this great "Let's Play School" kit I got for Christmas which I eventually used to teach an invisible class of dogs.
So what do you do? I pretended to be a teacher by myself. It wasn't as lonely when I imagined a cast of characters. It helped to have a chalkboard, attendance books, maps, charts (my mom got the me the exact same number chart and giant map book as my kindergarten class had, booyah!) and more. But I also used my computer to create homework assignments and letters to send home.
The basement was great for a classroom. I taught lessons on how every several years, the top half of Africa breaks off for a few moments before fusing back together. Every November, I gave the class a choice between learning about families or farms. I gave homework assignments. I made up graduation songs based on songs from Sunday School.
The charade ended when I found myself reading aloud to an invisible class of dogs and felt like an idiot. Still, it's a fond memory.
MADLIB VARIATIONS
Also good for indoor recess. But eventually we'd read our Madlibs loud and nobody would be laughing anymore. That meant we were in a rut!
Sometimes we tried using the same word for every time the story called for a certain part of speech. For example, in every "noun" space, we'd write "Jake," the one who I played basketball with in first grade. Well, a nounâ¯canâ¯be a person, right?
Occasionally we wrote our own, based on real school experiences. Good madlibs might come from the time our science teacher set off the fire alarms by putting Play-Doh in the microwave, or we might just come up with a story that takes place in history class. One thing not to do? Make Madlibs about things that Christine wasn't familiar with, like Super Mario games. We tried that once and I was so busy correcting her on what words to use that it was no fun.
NO DOG
This one was actually created by my grandpa and little sister Emily. They sometimes watched us us when we were young, and we always found plenty to do. No Dog was a counting game that Emily thought was fabulous.
We started by gathering four balloons, then followed the formula. Grandpa would reach over for one balloon and say: "One balloon and no dog." They did the same for a second balloon. "Two balloons and no dog!"
The pattern continued until they reached 4 balloons. That's when they called Brittany over and said, "4 balloons and 1 dog!" The game ended there.
Grandpa bribed Brittany with French fries. Of course, the trick was to have her NOT discover and try to reach the snack before they reached "4 balloons and one dog!" Repeat as necessary, until you run out of fries. Be sure to shower your own dog with affection for being a good participant.
Oh yeah, and if we needed to find a use for the balloons afterward, a game of "don't let the balloon touch the floor" was always fun.
FAUX ICE SKATING
If we were lucky enough to have a sheet of ice covering the ground in winter after a snowfall, we would go slide around on it. It's super fun and was responsible for a very memorable elementary school play date as well as an exciting recess. This has happened about twice in my life. It was amazing.
DRESS UP AT THE FAST FOOD RESTAURANT
Our grandparents took us out to eat at fast food restaurants frequently when we were kids. We would first wash our hands with Grandma's signature Wet Ones, grab some ketchup, find a table, wipe down the table, spread out napkins to put our food onto, and then eat.
After eating, we used our French fry containers as hats. They could be worn either way. For a want a baseball cap-esque look, we could wear it with the long side of the container off to the side.
POOH CRAYONS
A favorite of Christine and mine in the first grade. Ideally your playground should have a place that you can sit under, like a secret hideout only in public. (We used the small hidey area under a fire engine-shaped jungle gym). You will also need a good array of woodchips.
With your friend, choose a theme. Ours was The Book of Pooh--- that old Disney Channel show where the Pooh characters were puppets. Then use the woodchip to "draw" on the pavement and see what color it is. For example, if you think the color coming out is blue, you will name your crayon along the theme of Winnie the Pooh. Blue might be something like "Kessie Sky Blue." Brown might be "Owl's House Brown."
For an extra challenge, try to predict the color before you even start drawing. You will be amazed to find out that yes, the mystery color you picked, IS in fact Tigger Orange after all. With a little imagination, though, you will probably always be right.
***
While actual games were great, my runaway imagination originally started when my sister and I would play pretend. Pretend games were a highlight of my childhood. Who says that kids are always texting on phones and don't have imaginations anymore? I think those people couldn't be more wrong. Kelly and I played a lot.
That isn't to say that we didn't stay inside and play video games. The Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and Wii were staples throughout different eras of childhood. A particular favorite Game Boy adventure was Magical Quest starring Mickey and Minnie. We gave names and personalities to all the "enemies," wrote newsletters about the game, and most importantly, played them together. When Kelly borrowed the game from me one day, I was furious when she moved to the next world for me. I was obsessed with that game. When I lost it for several months on end, life was pretty terrible. Once I found it hiding in my closet, it was all I did that day. We ended up defeating the final boss, Emperor Pete, within a minute of each other on the same day, in the basement, so we wouldn't wake up little Emily who was sleeping.
And then, the Wii. My family loved the Wii in my teen years, and we spent countless hours on Wii Sports and Wii Fit. They became classics that, whenever I watched longplays on YouTube, reminded me of summers spent playing together. Mario Party 8 was also just as much fun to watch others play as it was to play yourself.
Still, nothing beat playing pretend.
ORGANIZED "PLAY PRETEND" GAMES THAT ONLY SISTERS COULD LOVE
Captain Underpants/George and Harold
We were big fans of the Captain Underpants series. I had a yellow cape that I put on, minus my clothes, to play the role of the superhero. Kelly would play his fourth-grade sidekick, Harold. We'd stay in an apartment (aka my room) and fight villains together.
One of these villains was Doctor Diaper, whose secret hideout was my parents' bathroom. It was the perfect stark environment for an evil guy's lab---minus the floral wallpaper, but we imagined that the flowers were lightning bolts. We'd use the water from the sinks to create potions to defeat him, and move on to other missions.
Other times we'd play George and Harold (the fictional creators of the superhero), and we'd hang out, build forts, and draw comics together Now that I think about it, I don't know why the "George and Harold" part was necessary...we just played, but imagined we were boys!
We also spent a lot of time writing our own Captain Underpants stories, which were often taken word-for-word from the books themselves. We had a whole journal dedicated to these stories, as well as badly drawn pictures of the characters that looked more like potatoes than people. To this day, my version of Harold is referred to as "potato Harold."
The most memorable thing we did, though, was putting on The Play.
It was a warm summer day when, on the spot, we decided to write a Captain Underpants play to put on for our parents. We were the only two actors of course, so we compensated for this by writing two acts. We played George and Harold in the first. In the second act, I played Captain Underpants and Kelly was a villain from the books called Deputy Doo Doo (other than the red cowboy hat, I'll leave it to your imagination what he looked like). The intermission would also give me a good chance to put on my costume---my underwear and cape. Kelly's job was to be mean but also entertain, which she usually did by saying "Howdy partner!" as he was a cowboy-type turd.
We practiced a few times, then called our parents into my bedroom. Everything went smoothly up until act 2. I entered the room after intermission, donned my yellow cape, and prepared for battle with Deputy Doo Doo.
Then Kelly single-handedly spoiled the show. Noticing that "Howdy partner!" got a lot of laughs, she kept tipping her hat, bowing and saying "Howdy partner!" over and over. Throughout the Whole. Entire. Scene. I wanted to kill her, but I ended up laughing too.
Captain Underpants won. At least that part stuck to the script; though Deputy Doo Doo got the moral victory for making the audience laugh and keeping the play from being forgotten about.
Famous Girls
This one was more of an excuse to make up songs than anything else. We'd get together and dress up, then perform made-up-as-we-went songs for an "audience." And that's all there was to it.
Lucille
Sometimes wish fulfillment translated into games. I got to be a rich girl in this one. We picked Lucille from the Junie B. Jones series (or I did, since I created it), but in our version of her life, she lived in a fancy apartment (aka my room) and Meanie Jim lived down the hall with his sister Velma. My sister was the poor friend who knocked on Lucille's door one day and finds out that her former friend moved away. Now Lucille lives there, who promptly invites the poor girl in. They become best friends.
Kelly started each game by knocking on my door, wanting to come visit. She would show up with what she called a "richie thing." This was a mildly "expensive" trinket, clothing item, or toy that she showed Lucille and maybe had fun using with her.
We acted out many scenarios here. A couple of favorite recurring ones included Lucille having a birthday party and smashing her face into cake using a pillow for a prop, going to Jim's mother's wedding and finding the missing wedding ring, playing with a Magic 8 Ball, going to school (basement steps made good school bus seats), visiting friends who live on the same floor, escaping from said friends' little brothers who have dangerous weapons and are threatening to use them on you. The weapons? PERMANENT MARKERS!
Sometimes we also tried something else and had "free computer time" together in the computer room of the "apartment building." PollyPocket.com was a great site to play on during this time. We were in the middle of a Gryffindor vs. Slytherin war at the time--she liked Draco Malfoy and I was in the middle of my Harry Potter crush. I distinctly remember Kelly printing out a Polly coloring page during a Lucille game and covering Polly in Slytherin tattoos.
This game averaged 45-90 minutes, but I think our record was four hours.
Pet Rescue
Down in the basement, we ran a pet rescue center where we'd take in stuffed animals that had run into trouble. We'd usually hear some kind of noise outside where an animal would be, and we'd go rescue it and take care of it at the center. We had fun adventures there, too. We'd pretend to give the animals bubble baths, but we'd fill up the bath too high and then the bubbles would spill out the building.
Jenny
The same thing as Lucille, except Kelly played the rich girl (named Jenny) and I would come over to her house. I guess it was only fair that we both got to play the rich girl eventually.
Polly Pockets
The world we created with these dolls was so complex that it could have been a TV show.
It all started when Grandma gave Kelly a Polly Pocket car for her birthday when she was about four or five. We all played with it together that evening.
Several years later, we both got another doll for the first day of school. Then, whenever we spent the day with our grandparents, it became very exciting to go to Zany Brainy and pick out a new Polly Pocket doll. It was also the first thing I bought with my allowance that I should have.
(Mini story time. Prior to that, I rebelled by using money that was meant for soft pretzel day for the school store. Instead of buying a pretzel at snack time one day, I went to the school store at lunch and spent the money on a sparkly pencil case. I didn't care for the sports balls on top, but I loved the pink sparkles underneath! How cool was that? I just bought something with my own money! Kind of. I decided that I had to hide it from my mom, because I was convinced that she would find out that I used her money for toys instead of snack pretzels.
Naturally, with the brand of Super Vision common in mothers, she found an extra quarter or two in my backpack that afternoon that should have been used for pretzel funds, and asked me about it. I told her that Haley forgot her pretzel money that day, so I lent mine to her. Mom freaked out about this and asked if she should call Haley's parents. Haley had no idea that the money I used was supposed to be for pretzel day. I would be in so much trouble with at least two more people, and then I'd get Haley into trouble for something she didn't do.
Fortunately, nothing came of this. So I kept the forbidden pencil case at school, where it couldn't be found by nosy moms who would be like "Where did you get this?? I've never seen it before!", until we ended for the summer.
When I got home on the day we cleared out our desks, I placed the pencil case under a stack of school supplies and ran to the stairs as fast as possible to get it safely to my room without detection. Mom never found the pencil case, and I doubt now that she'd notice it or care, but I never went to the school store again. Too much trouble.)
Anyway, I saved up to buy a $30 stage complete with fabulous outfits. No guilt about it. From then on, these girls became one of our favorite people.
They became very real characters to me, and I couldn't stop thinking about them for years. Polly was the "all-around character," someone who was popular, stylish, fun, and a good singer. She even dated Harry Potter. Did I mention that pretend games are good wish fulfillment?
Shani was her creative best friend who was wacky and hyper. Lea was the shy girl of the group, and was also a great soccer player. Lila was a cool fashion designer. Ana was another somewhat shy girl who had a talent for art. They all had siblings, from Ryan the prankster; to Hallie and Talia, the Teletubby-obsessed twins who believed in an evil version of Po; to Ralphie who was killed in a lightning storm. Shani had such a huge family she was always being forced to visit, but I never developed any of them.
Then there were side characters. Ms. Rosenbloom, the mean 5th grade teacher who turned nice when Polly was in her class---we used a Barbie doll for her character. Pia, the British cousin. Ginger, Polly's well-mannered friend who didn't get along with Shani's wacky personality. Kylie, the dork across the street who loved flowy dresses and Winnie the Pooh.
Kelly made up her own as well. Aleena was a wealthy pop star who had the ability to talk to the girls from wherever she was, who was related to both Bill Gates AND Avril Lavigne (did I say wish fulfillment?). Arlene was her sassy friend. Aleena, by pure chance, also had two twin siblings, Jaimie and Don, obsessed with the Teletubbies.
I played Polly Pockets until I was 14. You heard me. The characters were so awesome that I didn't want to get rid of them, and it never stopped being fun. It was storytelling, only with physical people instead of pencils. It helped that I had a younger sister, of course. We even had a designated room for them; the sunroom was the official "Polly Pocket room" until it moved to the basement soundproof room years later.
It wasn't always obvious to me that I was too old for them until my family went on a trip to New York in fifth grade. We visited the giant Toys R' Us and got to pick anything we wanted. I chose a Polly Pocket activity book that I learned about years ago that I thought was very good. I couldn't wait to check out what was inside on the train home.
I was disappointed from the start. There were very simple dot to dots, was easy to see what the picture was without doing any work. There were also easy "spot the item" games and other things that would have entertained me in kindergarten. Why did I get this? Â Days later I tried to get my money's worth by using the stickers in the back to add to a picture I colored myself. It still wasn't fun.
Playing with the dolls stopped physically being fun just before I entered high school, almost as if my body knew something was wrong. Even Kelly claimed that she felt more comfortable acting out the dialogue in her head. Then something strange happened: I would have been playing for only ten minutes when I would get the urge to poop every time.
That was how it went during the last several Polly games. My body would not let me sit on that rug without letting me know it was time to go to the restroom and do something that was actually productive. And then, one of those times, we put down the dolls and just never picked them up again. As we all do.
***
Finally, there were a few other games I invented that few people knew about. Revel in this never-before shared information:
TIME-WASTING GAMES I ONLY PLAYED IN MY HEAD
"SWEET BABBOO" PRODUCTIONS
The space between the window treatments on the top of my second bedroom window and the midpoint windowsill created a shape that looked like a girl's side silhouette laying down. When I looked at it with my head tilted to the side, it sort of looked like Eliza Thornberry had her back to someone and she was peeking back at them shyly with her arms behind her back, pointing down, fingers interlocked. Why was she so shy? I next imagined a young boy behind her, giving her a flower, and saying "I've got a valentine for you, Sweet Babboo." I don't know why I chose Sally Brown's invented catchphrase as the thing the boy said, but I did, and that's how it stayed. I think it was one of those things that happens when you're tired and your thoughts just kind of go in freefall.
Sometimes I laid in bed, looking at this "silhouette," and imagine a brief story about the girl. Each story began with the "title sequence," which was the boy giving her a flower and saying the line before the tape rolled. I enjoyed creating the "origin story" which was an episode featuring the boy saying the line, though I can't recall what happened in it. I eventually also made up mental stories about her troublemaking little sister, Susie. These fantasies usually occurred before I got out of bed in the morning.
BANANA SPLITS
When we were sitting at an intersection, and two cars turned left and right at the same time, I called it a banana split. Again, no winners, points, or losers here. I think Kelly said she did the same thing at one point.
DON'T SCRAPE THE STOP SIGN
You know about this one from a prior chapter. After the school bus scraped a stop sign one day, I eagerly waited for it to happen again every time we passed it. I think it only happened again once. Still, it was made more exciting by the fact it barely happened at all. The rare occurrence made the game even more worth playing.
THE POSTER GAME
You know those posters that have something standing out and text that says "It's okay to be different?" Or something along those lines. Well, I saw a poster like that once and it inadvertently got me thinking of real-life situations that would pop up on occasion.
Maybe it was a row of blue chairs, with one being green. Or maybe it was a row of daisies with a rose in the middle. I would take a mental snapshot of it and chalk it up to an "It's okay to be different" moment. No points, winners, or losers in this game. Just satisfaction upon finding the perfect opportunity.
With all these detailed stories in my head, I am sorely disappointed that I have never published anything before this. The truth is, it just takes too much time to think of a detailed plot and spend years rewriting a huge book of 200 pages. I could hardly get through revising a 19-page paper in college. So until they invent software that lets you slow down time/lets you instantly transfer words to paper without you writing or typing, here is a story snippet...